Bootstrap 1 - 31/May/2012
Summer, 2007, UK.
Brian, 'Brains', had bought the 'meta paint'. He'd watched the video. He'd read the instructions. Conservatively, he'd painted-up a surplus 2mm figure. Though a few smears had gone on a defunct diorama.
Now, he watched the figure stagger around that diorama. It was a World War II British soldier, carefully painted with a bandaged head, with red dot. The figure didn't seem to be able to walk off the landscape; near the edge he just veered away, and kept wandering.
He ignored a finger-tip waved in his face. If picked up he just froze back into painted plastic, again. Until he was put on that diorama, again.
"I don't think he's intelligent", Brian murmured to himself. "It's more he's doing what fits his surroundings. As if he's an animated part of them. This needs careful thought."
A week later Brian had thought more about the problem than even he thought sensible. The shaky videos of hovering or flying cars didn't interest him. Cars were, to him, four-wheeled tin raincoats. Not some mystical freedom device. But, he guessed being in a wheelchair might be colouring his opinion.
It turned out you could 'breed' the paint. You could even change its colour, if you were careful. Slowly feeding it more paint seemed to work best, along with an energy source, like a mild electric current, or strong sunlight; mirrors helped.
Ah yes. He was supposed to call it 'handwavium'.
Brains was worried about contaminating it with information; some suggestions of feeding-in SF books, or illustrations, was in the instructions. He'd tried to hide his browsing trail, but there were worrying hints that living creatures could be affected, and, unless very careful, strange things would happen.
Brian had turned to his best occult books, re-reading Wilson and Bonewits. Intention seemed critical, clear, maybe even fanatical, intention. No matter what some people said, Brian wasn't sure he could do 'fanatic', and he couldn't spend years developing a useful 'magical personality'.
OK, he didn't know how to get what he wanted, or where he wanted. But, he wasn't an engineer and a computer programmer for nothing. If you'd trouble starting-up something big, in a new environment, you started with something small, and boot-strapped.
He needed tools, to build the tools, to get what he wanted. And, they had to have safety features built in. And not decide to go Skynet or Nuclear Genie out-of-the-bottle on him. Which led to his current ritual.
Fortunately Summer thunder storms in his area were reasonably predictable - at least you knew they were on the way. His cottage, a dower house, had never been hit by lightning, but some careful engineering would likely fix that. He had a diorama of a 1980s computer room already, and with a little modification it matched that film, right down to the frantically scurrying operator.
He'd been collecting old SF films on video for a few years now. People were just throwing them away, even if they didn't buy a DVD replacement. He'd standing orders in a number of local charity shops. Somehow, he felt tapes were more 'solid' than DVDs, more like films; no reconstruction of images from compression which you hoped they'd gotten right.
Eventually he settled on three tapes. The original 'TRON'[1], 'Weird Science'[2] and 'Bagpuss'[3], the last of which he sacrificed from his special collection. All carefully rune and circuitry inscribed.
The TRON video, still in its original box, was taped to the back of a blown-up to life-size, sepia, Victorian print, that looked very like Bagpuss's 'Emily'. So he'd get someone who'd bestride the virtual and real worlds.
Weird Science contributed the ritual (he hoped he wasn't supposed to have stolen the Victorian bra he was wearing on his head), he refurbished an original model of the PC used in the film, and carefully connected the computer room diorama. The trick was getting Emily, not Lisa (or a nuclear weapon). Hence, the sepia print, and no doll.
Bagpuss required an original as possible cloth cat, and he'd added a Bagpuss diorama, carefully missing the central character. The cat carefully resting 'in the arms' of the sepia print.
All in the scaled-up ritual circle, drawn as accurately as he could. With Emily and Bagpuss being the targets. Or, more accurately Emily, who had a cloth cat called 'Bagpuss'.
He hoped this was all obscure enough, and that his initials of 'OBS' for being 'Orlando Brian Severn' might help in some way. Names of Power.
"No, no, mustn't think about Murphy and Eris!"
SfX: Lightning Flash!
Show Time!
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind
Summer, 2007, UK.
Brian, 'Brains', had bought the 'meta paint'. He'd watched the video. He'd read the instructions. Conservatively, he'd painted-up a surplus 2mm figure. Though a few smears had gone on a defunct diorama.
Now, he watched the figure stagger around that diorama. It was a World War II British soldier, carefully painted with a bandaged head, with red dot. The figure didn't seem to be able to walk off the landscape; near the edge he just veered away, and kept wandering.
He ignored a finger-tip waved in his face. If picked up he just froze back into painted plastic, again. Until he was put on that diorama, again.
"I don't think he's intelligent", Brian murmured to himself. "It's more he's doing what fits his surroundings. As if he's an animated part of them. This needs careful thought."
A week later Brian had thought more about the problem than even he thought sensible. The shaky videos of hovering or flying cars didn't interest him. Cars were, to him, four-wheeled tin raincoats. Not some mystical freedom device. But, he guessed being in a wheelchair might be colouring his opinion.
It turned out you could 'breed' the paint. You could even change its colour, if you were careful. Slowly feeding it more paint seemed to work best, along with an energy source, like a mild electric current, or strong sunlight; mirrors helped.
Ah yes. He was supposed to call it 'handwavium'.
Brains was worried about contaminating it with information; some suggestions of feeding-in SF books, or illustrations, was in the instructions. He'd tried to hide his browsing trail, but there were worrying hints that living creatures could be affected, and, unless very careful, strange things would happen.
Brian had turned to his best occult books, re-reading Wilson and Bonewits. Intention seemed critical, clear, maybe even fanatical, intention. No matter what some people said, Brian wasn't sure he could do 'fanatic', and he couldn't spend years developing a useful 'magical personality'.
OK, he didn't know how to get what he wanted, or where he wanted. But, he wasn't an engineer and a computer programmer for nothing. If you'd trouble starting-up something big, in a new environment, you started with something small, and boot-strapped.
He needed tools, to build the tools, to get what he wanted. And, they had to have safety features built in. And not decide to go Skynet or Nuclear Genie out-of-the-bottle on him. Which led to his current ritual.
Fortunately Summer thunder storms in his area were reasonably predictable - at least you knew they were on the way. His cottage, a dower house, had never been hit by lightning, but some careful engineering would likely fix that. He had a diorama of a 1980s computer room already, and with a little modification it matched that film, right down to the frantically scurrying operator.
He'd been collecting old SF films on video for a few years now. People were just throwing them away, even if they didn't buy a DVD replacement. He'd standing orders in a number of local charity shops. Somehow, he felt tapes were more 'solid' than DVDs, more like films; no reconstruction of images from compression which you hoped they'd gotten right.
Eventually he settled on three tapes. The original 'TRON'[1], 'Weird Science'[2] and 'Bagpuss'[3], the last of which he sacrificed from his special collection. All carefully rune and circuitry inscribed.
The TRON video, still in its original box, was taped to the back of a blown-up to life-size, sepia, Victorian print, that looked very like Bagpuss's 'Emily'. So he'd get someone who'd bestride the virtual and real worlds.
Weird Science contributed the ritual (he hoped he wasn't supposed to have stolen the Victorian bra he was wearing on his head), he refurbished an original model of the PC used in the film, and carefully connected the computer room diorama. The trick was getting Emily, not Lisa (or a nuclear weapon). Hence, the sepia print, and no doll.
Bagpuss required an original as possible cloth cat, and he'd added a Bagpuss diorama, carefully missing the central character. The cat carefully resting 'in the arms' of the sepia print.
All in the scaled-up ritual circle, drawn as accurately as he could. With Emily and Bagpuss being the targets. Or, more accurately Emily, who had a cloth cat called 'Bagpuss'.
He hoped this was all obscure enough, and that his initials of 'OBS' for being 'Orlando Brian Severn' might help in some way. Names of Power.
"No, no, mustn't think about Murphy and Eris!"
SfX: Lightning Flash!
Show Time!
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind